The goals presented in The Pushkin Manifesto were formulated partly in connection with the foundation of ELAMA and partly during the second meeting of ELAMA in June 1999, and finally at the Pushkin Symposium itself in September 1999. From the very beginning, the difference in scope was stressed between the Europe-wide, interdisciplinary goals of Eurolinguistics on the one hand, and the more narrow national-philological or national-structuralist disciplines with their limited European orientation on the other (cf. ”Against a Rephilologization of Linguistics”).

In order to carry out a Europe-wide programme in the sense of the Pushkin Theses, there was and will be a great need for researchers and institutes to co-operate on things European — be it of a linguistic, ethnic or cultural-historical character. Contacts have been established, therefore, between the linguistics and language departments of the local universities (Heidelberg, Mannheim and Tübingen), Scandinavia (Stockholm, Helsinki), East Europe (Vilnius, Lithuania, Olsztyn, Poland and St. Petersburg, Russia), France (Strasbourg) and Italy (Udine). The expertise on language contact and multilingualism found there became the basis for ”The Second Symposium on Eurolinguistics: Contact Typology, Convergence and Divergence and the Rise of New Languages and Nations in Europe”held in Pushkin, Russia in 1999 (September 10 –16).